Dopaminergic Contributions to Socio-Affective Cognition

Social cognition enables individuals to infer the emotional states of others and adapt behavior accordingly. The ability to detect and respond to the affective states of conspecifics guides adaptive social interactions and is disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder, where deficits in affective recognition persist despite treatment. Yet the neural mechanisms underlying this capacity remain poorly understood. Dopamine is a compelling candidate neuromodulator, given its established role in motivation, reward, and the processing of emotionally salient stimuli, as well as the alterations in dopaminergic signaling observed across psychiatric conditions associated with social deficits. Beyond its well-characterized contribution to motivation, midbrain dopaminergic systems may also participate in evaluating and discriminating affective signals from others Here, we explore this possibility, considering how dopaminergic signaling relates to distinct dimensions of social behavior. This work contributes to a broader understanding of socio-affective cognition and points to dopaminergic signaling as a potential substrate underlying social dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders.